What do students believe about learning?
- Students’ beliefs about learning affect how they learn.
- Beliefs are not fixed and can be influenced by teachers.
- Effective beliefs centre on learners’ ability to control and direct their learning, and to improve.
This inquiry explores the beliefs students hold about learning and about themselves as learners. It addresses three kinds of beliefs that teachers of bilingual Pasifika students should be aware of:
- epistemological beliefs
- self-efficacy beliefs
- language-learning beliefs.
It’s also very important for teachers to reflect on the beliefs they hold about learning and learners, as these will inevitably affect the way they plan, teach, and interact with their students. ( Being a good learner and Who talks in class? explore this in more detail.)
Epistemological beliefs
Epistemological beliefs – that is, beliefs about learning and knowledge in general – relate to the following areas:
- How certain is knowledge?
- Who ’holds’ knowledge?
- What is the learning process like?
- Where does learning ability come from?
Students will learn more effectively if their beliefs reflect their awareness that:
- knowledge, skills, and attitudes are more tentative and unpredictable than fixed and rigid
- knowledge does not exist in the mind of the teacher to be handed down; rather, it develops through independent reasoning and collaboration
- learning is a slow and sometimes irregular process of accumulating knowledge, skills, and attitudes
- the ability to learn is not entirely innate; it can be enhanced in a number of ways.
To a certain extent, epistemological beliefs are culturally prescribed. As well, not all teachers hold these more effective beliefs and, even when they do, the beliefs of teachers and students are not always aligned.
According to Boekaerts:
Younger children tend to believe that if they want to achieve something strongly enough and if they put a lot of effort into a task, they will then achieve the outcome. However, as students mature they begin to see the interrelationship between ability, effort and outcomes.
(2002, page 16)
Jones (1991) investigated the fourth area above – where does learning ability come from? – with Pasifika girls at secondary level. She found that the girls in her study attributed their lack of success almost entirely to a lack of ‘brains’, rather than to the need for a particular kind of effort. Jones and, more recently, Nakhid (2003) found that this ’lack of brains’ belief was frequently and unhelpfully reinforced by teachers in various ways.
Self-efficacy beliefs
Self-efficacy beliefs are the beliefs students have about how effective they are as learners. All students hold beliefs about how capable they are in a particular area or in a subject domain (for example, mathematics or language). Students who believe they are good at a subject often put a lot more effort into learning in that area, and consequently tend to be more successful.
Woolfolk Hoy (2004) suggests that it can be helpful for students to reflect on their self-efficacy beliefs, to evaluate them, and to regulate them. She explains that teachers can help students improve by providing specific feedback on their performance. She also makes the point that teachers can help their students become aware of the effects of their efforts and of the improvements in their work over time.
Woolfolk Hoy claims:
Self-efficacy influences motivation through the choices we make and the goals we set … Even when students have the same level of academic skills, those with higher self-efficacy for the task perform better on schoolwork … when sense of efficacy in a given area is high, we will set higher goals, are less afraid of failure, and find new strategies when old ones fail.
(2004, pages 4–5)
When teachers set relatively short-term goals with their students and ensure that the students know the criteria for success and can tell when they have achieved their goals, they help their students to be aware of how their effort has led to achievement. The research findings about feedback, setting goals, and relating effort to achievement are discussed in sections X, VIII, and IX of Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling (Ministry of Education, 2003a).
Beliefs about language learning
The beliefs bilingual Pasifika students have about language learning are particularly important. Students’ beliefs in this area centre on:
- whether or not success is determined by language aptitude
- how difficult it is to learn another language successfully
- how long it may take to learn a language
- how a language is best learned.
You can see that these areas are closely related to self-efficacy. Bilingual students’ beliefs about language learning will probably influence their use of strategies, their motivation, and their confidence.
Beliefs about language learning are different from beliefs about other learning areas because they are associated with another set of beliefs and attitudes about the language that is being learned, its culture, and its speakers. Language learners also have attitudes about their own language, its associated culture, and its speakers. They may devalue their own L1, but value the majority language. In New Zealand, for example, they may perceive English as being more useful for getting a job. (Some of these issues are explored in the inquiry Identity and motivation .)
Learners’ motivation and need to learn a majority language may be greater than their motivation to learn their first language, and there is also likely to be greater support in the community for learning the majority language. In that sense, bilingual Pasifika children’s learning of English is supported by the values and resources of the wider community.
Influencing beliefs
Students’ epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy beliefs, and beliefs about language learning are not permanently fixed. They can be strongly influenced by teachers, who may either encourage or discourage the learners. The video clips Effective teaching relationships and Supporting first languages look at some ways of encouraging Pasifika learners’ positive beliefs.
A number of these issues are also discussed in Franken, May, and McComish (2005, pages 39–44, Section 3).
